Dead men rooming.

"So, Chad's mother wants us to look at another apartment."

I was driving my oldest, Annie, to the supermarket, preparing for a fabulous Mexican feast. "I'm well confused," I said. "You've already picked out another apartment."

"I know."

"You've already signed the lease."

"I know."

"You've already handed over the security deposit."

"I know!" Annie sat in the passenger's seat and held her belly, as her baby squirmed around inside her. "But she says this is a bargain that we can't turn down. The place is about $950, and--"

"I'm right bamboozled," I said. "That's more than what you're paying now."

"I know."

"And it's more than some of the places where I live, which you thought were great."

"I know."

"And you said you couldn't afford those places, but this is more."

"I know!" Annie giggled. "But this one is a three bedroom."

"What does that matter? If you can't afford a lower-priced one, how can you afford--"

"It gets better." Annie paused and looked out the window, still holding her belly. "I didn't tell you why she knows the place opened up."

"Oh, God!"

"See, Chad's sister lives in the apartment above, and the guy on the floor below used to be a family friend. Notice I said 'used.' He died last week."

I shook my head. "Annie, do you really want to live in a dead man's apartment?"

"It gets better. Then Chad's mother told us exactly how he died. Said it was horrible.

Said he had this weird disease that caused all his blood to flow out of every orifice as he was dying. Apparently the stains are so bad that they still can't get some of them out."

Well, that's a keeper.

Paint me a superstitious one, but I don't like to move into places that have histories like that, especially recent histories. Josie and I, when we bought the Homestead, knew that the previous owner had passed away there. He had been rather obsese and suffered a heart attack on the second floor. They had trouble getting him downstairs, from what I hear.

However, his wife had lived there for years after he died, so it hadn't been recent. Even so, both Josie and Ashes see things on the stairwell where they would have carried him down.

In our first apartment together, Corb and I both had numerous instances involving the ghost of the old man who lived there before. He used to come to visit Corb at night. Not that Corb's adverse to old men, but this one was too little creepy. Our cat Thumbkin died in the apartment, too, and for months afterwards, Corb would feel something move to the foot of the bed at the end of the day, as we were preparing to go to bed.

Bottom line, bargain hunters: I'm a bit happy that Annie did not decide to take advantage of this fabulous offer. Sometimes what came before can have a huge influence on what comes afterwards, if you ask me. Better to let sleeping corpses rest.

Biting the hand

So, this past Saturday, Corb and I headed out on our annual pilgrimmage to Provincetown, to have some fun in the sun with our fellow gays.

Where else can I spend hours holding hands with the Corbster and walking up and down the town square, over and over again? I tell you, I kind of know how Kiera Knightley and Orlando Bloom at the end of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Last summer, since we were a bit strapped, we spent a credit crunch day at Provincetown, trying to be as thrifty as possible. Even so, I picked up a great book on the films of Elizabeth Taylor at the used book store.

This year, things are better, so I was REALLY looking to a return to our normal routine. And one big part of that, I have to admit, was our annual dinner at the Patio, this open air restaurant located right on the main drag (pardon the pun). The food has always been great and the place affords a great view of the characters that inhabit the town.

I have to admit, I was thinking about the meal for days in advance. I had really missed going the year before, and perhaps because of the two year gap, the enjoyment I had received from the meals there in the past had been magnified to ten times larger than that giant corn dog that Michele Bachmann tried to shove in her mouth a few weeks ago.

Well, sometimes expectations do not live up to reality, and I'm sorry to report, that was my experience this year at the Patio.

I blame the waiter. He was just kind of snotty, and set the mood for the entire dining experience.

It started from the first moment he came to our table. The minute he saw us, he took one look at us, kind of made a face, and then said, "I'm assuming you won't be looking at the wine menu?" and took the wine glasses off of our table.

Fair enough. As a matter of fact, we weren't looking for any wine.

Then he came by with our water. I took the glass from his hand to place in front of me, and before I could put it down, he practically started to have a nervous breakdown in front of me, because I made the mistake of moving to place the glass down on the table, completely naked.

"Hmmm hmmm hmmm." The waiter started coughing. I looked up, to see him staring at me, aghast. "I was REALLY hoping to place that guy on a coaster." Then he snatched the glass away from Corb, so he could personally place it down, properly.

Okay, so maybe he was a stickler for those sorts of things. Amused, I picked up my blackberry and started to type, "I think our waiter is a control freak."

"Hmmm hmmm hmmm."

I looked up from the Blackberry. There was the waiter, right behind me. Had he read what I wrote? I looked around, nervously, and smiled innocently up at him.

"Ready to order?" In a flash, he took the rolls in his hand and casually tossed them across the table, so that they landed, practically on Corb's lap.

"Um, sure..." We started to order from the menu, even though I had just heard him recite a list of the specials to the people who were seated next to us. People who had ordered wine, by the way. I guess he figured we weren't the kind of people who like specials, either.

Fifteen minutes later, we had our food order, but there was only one thing. The drinks that we had ordered, when the waiter had assumed we didn't want wine? Still not at our table. Who ever heard of someone receiving their dinner before receiving their alchoholic beverages? It boggles the mind. I mean, from a restaurant standpoint, doesn't it make sense to start the guests drinking so they're ready for seconds by the time the food order comes in? More profit that way, I'd say.

So, we had to beg the boy who delivered our food to find out what had happened to our drinks. About five minutes later, our surly waiter arrived with them, along with water refills, which were long overdue.

But wait! It gets better. After dinner was through (I ordered the mac and cheese with lobster, something I have loved in the past, but kind of regretted this time), the waiter came back. "Are you all set for your check?" he asked, somehow forgetting to ask us if we wanted dessert.

I mean, come on. No drinks? No dessert? What waiter in their right mind leaves those things out?

Apparently, a waiter who didn't like his customers much. Rather than ask for a dessert menu (and I did love their desserts), I accepted the bill and paid it.

This is the point where you can always get back at a waiter, however. I left the man a ten percent tip, and deliberately wrote, under my signature, "Service was poor."

Service may have been poor, but I wasn't at the time, and if the waiter had been a bit smarter about things, we would have ordered much more and given him a bigger tip. There's a lesson for you, sinners: no matter how much your customer irritates you, it's probably best just to suck it up, smile for the camera, and pretend as if we had all the manners of Fred Astaire.

The rest of our time in Provincetown was just great, and we had a much nicer waiter at the place we visited for lunch, a waiter we met again at the hilarious drag show we attended, with Dina Martina. He was cute and had a personality, so we both ordered two rounds of drinks, both times. Happy gays are tipsy gays, after all.

Some catch.

I move over to Corb, laden with foodage. We're at our traditional booth at Panera's. It's a Sunday.

"Shhh, don't say another word," Corb says to me, the minute I sat down. "This is way too interesting."

"What?"

"Shhhh! The two behind us. They're on a first date, and I don't think the boy's scoring any points."

I glance over.


"Stop it!" whispers Corb urgently. "They'll realize we're looking at them."

"Well, I didn't see much," I whisper back.

"I'll look for you. So, here's the deal. They're both probably freshman in college, tops. He's cute enough."

"Which kind of cute?"

"Yours. But he has terrible clothes sense."

"Does he have hairy legs?"

"Hairy enough."

I grin. "That'll do."

"Yeah, but you'd hate how he's dressed. He's wearing...get this...a buttoned-up Oxford with those nylon whooshy gym shorts. And, he's weaing a pair of black sandals along with black socks, pulled up all the way. You know how much you hate the socks and sandals combination."

"Black socks especially." I sigh. "Why can't straight guys figure out what a horrible, horrible look that is?"

"You should see her body language," says Corb. "You can tell so much from that. She has her arms crossed, and she's turned away from him, as far as she can get. Oh, and if I were her, I'd be bored out of my mind,"

"Why?"

"The boy is dull beyond belief! He just spent the past fifteen minutes telling her about his summer at camp as a CTA and this one counselor who made an autistic kid cry. Then he tried to make himself sound all sweet and sensitive, and told her that he would have been more compassionate, if he had been the counselor. Oh, shhhh! Wait...he's just about to erupt again..."

Suddenly, the boy's voice booms through our area of the restaurant. It's masculine and husky, with all the makings of a used car salesman. "You know, you really are a beauty in the old fashioned way," he says, for all to hear. "Kind of like Marilyn Monroe. No, really! You totally are. Except, not like her. But that style. You know, you're a classic beauty."

"Oh my God," groans the girl. "You are such a player!"

"No, I'm not, really! A playa! No, I am not a playa, I swear."

"Are those sweat stains?" the girl says, suddenly mortified.

Okay, at the point, I can't help it, I have to take a look.

I see the boy, looking down at his shirt, which does have huge sweat stains under the pits. Instead of looking embarrassed, he just sits there with a stupid grin on his face. "Oh. Okay, okay, I can explain that. See, I was working out at the gym before I got here. Yeah, yeah, I know, not the best decision, I can accept that. But it's not like I didn't shower. Because I did, before I left the gym. So it's not like I stink or anything."

The girl rises from the table, shaking her non-Marilyn Monroe like blond hair. "I gotta go."

"Want a ride home?" the boy volunteers.

The girl smiles politely and walks out of the restaurant.

"No way!" I whisper. "She's ditching him."

We watch the rest of the act play out, in pantomime. The boy rises from the table, moves to her, standing on the sidewalk, motions to his car, parked nearby. She shakes her head again, takes out her cell phone. Starts dialing. The boy motions to his car one more time, practically pleading with her.

She won't even look at him by this point. Rejected, he starts to walk away. She stands outside the restaurant, playing with her cell phone. Doesn't even glance in his direction as he drives away.

I can't blame her. I think if I was on a blind date and the boy next to me had huge wet sweat stains under his pits, I wouldn't be that inclined to continue with the date, either. Let that be a lesson to you, guys: save the exercise for in the bedroom!

Ah, the heartbreak of young love. I'm happy we've reached the status of old married couple. Much less drama, that way.

Sunday Comics Sultry.

When I was a kid, my sister Laurie (at least, I think it was my sister Laurie) would on occasion set aside the Sunday comics pages from the Providence Journal, which my father would always bring home every Sunday morning to faithfully read (the news, that is...he hated the comics).

Every two or three months, she'd take the pages she had collected and cut them into individual strips--Mary Worth, Blondie, PEANUTS, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad (my favorite), Then, she gather them in no particular order and staple them together, so you had a little book of comic pages.

I was always fascinated by them, and remember spending summers in our garage, spread out on a lawnchair, poring through those little self-made books. A stack of comics, all randomized. Serials strewn throughout the collection, in no coherent order, often with weeks missing at a time.

To me, there was no better way to waste a summer day. Just looking at the pictures. Getting the pages grimy with my fingers.

Occasionally, I still get the feeling I had (because there was a very specific feeling) when I was laying in Dad's garage. It kind of comes over me, like a cool spring breeze.

Woke up this morning, and that feeling kind of came over me. I embraced it. Really, there's no better sensation in the world.

I always let it linger for as long as I can. It's like an aerosol can filled with summer youth.